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jamesrom commented on Cancer is surging, bringing a debate about whether to look for it   nytimes.com/2025/12/08/he... · Posted by u/brandonb
kulahan · 16 days ago
It's significantly more wicked to pretend that tests, treatments, and more aren't done by healthcare workers (yes, even private ones), and to inundate them with unimportant medical procedures while truly sick people are dying.

Yes, this is true even if the person opting for the elective surgery has millions, potentially even billions of dollars to pay with. Having money doesn't make your illness more important.

Don't get all holier-than-thou on topics like this; it's already a difficult-enough topic.

jamesrom · 16 days ago
> It's significantly more wicked to pretend that tests, treatments, and more aren't done by healthcare workers (yes, even private ones), and to inundate them with unimportant medical procedures while truly sick people are dying.

Strawman+ad hominem. No one is suggesting to pretend _anything_. Charge premiums for these tests based on how "unimportant" they are. Use market forces to move money from those willing to pay, to those who cannot.

jamesrom commented on Cancer is surging, bringing a debate about whether to look for it   nytimes.com/2025/12/08/he... · Posted by u/brandonb
bawolff · 16 days ago
If the cancer is not clinically significant, then its not life-altering information.

Essentially they are saying that many of these diagnoses are potentially false positives. To the point where detecting them might be more harmful then not. Keep in mind most cancer treatments are pretty harsh. They are better than cancer, but if you don't have clinically significant cancer then the treatments can be very not worth it.

jamesrom · 16 days ago
Then here's an idea: instead of hiding that information, you can explain it to the patient.

You have no authority to treat your patient like a child.

jamesrom commented on Cancer is surging, bringing a debate about whether to look for it   nytimes.com/2025/12/08/he... · Posted by u/brandonb
kulahan · 16 days ago
There is cancer in your body every single day. Your immune system handles it just fine. There is an explicit difference between cancer that needs treating and cancer that should be ignored because it's a waste of time and resources to treat. You're not a doctor, you're not qualified to tell the difference, you're not trained on cancers, you're not even in the medical field. The monopoly is held for exactly this reason.

We already have an extreme shortage of available healthcare workers. We don't need to stress them further because 20% of the population suddenly decides they need 80 elective surgeries to remove things that would've gone away or stayed benign on their own.

jamesrom · 16 days ago
> We already have an extreme shortage of available healthcare workers. We don't need to stress them further because 20% of the population suddenly decides they need 80 elective surgeries to remove things that would've gone away or stayed benign on their own.

Strawman. No one is suggesting adding extra stress to healthcare workers. It's also not you or your doctors call to make: let's gatekeep this patients cancer because our hospital can't deal with the workload. What a truly wicked idea.

To help alleviate the extreme shortage of available healthcare workers we should instead allow those wanting to pay for these elective surgeries, to pay for them! Drive money into healthcare, scale up treatments, drive money into research. Let the system work.

Don't just turn off the lights and shut the door.

jamesrom commented on The Company Man   lesswrong.com/posts/JH6tJ... · Posted by u/surprisetalk
jamesrom · 3 months ago
If you need a case study on "kill your darlings", read this.
jamesrom commented on Notation as a Tool of Thought (1979)   jsoftware.com/papers/tot.... · Posted by u/susam
jamesrom · 8 months ago
It's easy to think of notation like shell expansions, that all you're doing is replacing expressions with other expressions.

But it goes much deeper than that. Once my professor explained how many great discoveries are often paired with new notation. That new notation signifies "here's a new way to think about this problem". And that many unsolved problems today will give way to powerful notation.

jamesrom commented on Show HN: FlakeUI   github.com/tearflake/flak... · Posted by u/tearflake
jamesrom · 10 months ago
Kind of cool for a presentation deck. Sorely needs keyboard navigation support though.

Dead Comment

jamesrom commented on Did missing/corrupt dates in COBOL default to 1875-05-20?   retrocomputing.stackexcha... · Posted by u/SeenNotHeard
pavlov · 10 months ago
But then he goes around saying he actually found massive evidence of fraud. It’s not like he tweets: “Guys, my admittedly cursory examination gave me a feeling this old system which I’ve never seen before could be prone to fraud.”

What proof does he (or you) even have that a COBOL system is particularly prone to fraud? The world’s most important banks still run many things on COBOL. Are you saying that bank mainframes are full of IT fraud?

jamesrom · 10 months ago
Who said a COBOL system is prone to fraud?

Incomplete and inaccurate data is prone to fraud. Talking about COBOL is missing the point.

jamesrom commented on Did missing/corrupt dates in COBOL default to 1875-05-20?   retrocomputing.stackexcha... · Posted by u/SeenNotHeard
jamesrom · 10 months ago
Musk said: “Crazy things like just cursory examination of Social Security and we’ve got people in there that are 150 years old.”

He qualified this claim as a “cursory examination”. It’s clearly a comment about the quality of the data and systems. That this is the kind of thing that would be prone to fraud.

Before you hit downvote, please provide evidence that you didn’t hallucinate Musk’s claims here.

jamesrom commented on Microsoft Says Apple's 30% Fee Makes Xbox Cloud Gaming iOS App 'Impossible'   macrumors.com/2024/09/03/... · Posted by u/mfiguiere
jamesrom · a year ago
This is a PR maneuver that Microsoft can bring to the table to strike a deal with Apple.

They want everyone to think of the iOS + App Store as just distribution.

They want everyone to think of Xbox Cloud Gaming as a platform for developers.

The reality is the difference between these platforms is not so clear cut.

u/jamesrom

KarmaCake day1421December 19, 2010View Original